Black & White

I’m the Chairman of Bishop’s Stortford Camera Club for the next two years. The season runs from September to April, but we always run a series of events throughout the year on most Tuesdays and occasional Saturdays. This year’s first Saturday trip was to the Henry Moore Studios and Gardens in dreadful weather for photography…blazing sunshine!

Looking for perspective shots for my current photography course I looked up during our walk around Rowney Woods and saw what I thought were lots of birds nests in the tree. On closer inspection they were actually dead leaves that had been trapped in twigs that were growing vertically on the side of the trunk.

I toned this black and white image (with a blue colour to the highlights) to emphasis the cold nature of the day.

A very dull grey day today. I took a quick drive up to Alton Water and saw all sorts of interesting birds – cormorants, great crested grebes, a robin, wagtails, blue tits, a lovely white Egret…and what do I bring back photographically…a seagull!

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed this blog for a month or two that the Rowney Woods would feature again. We paid another early morning visit last Sunday, but with the days drawing in we were able to leave at a much more reasonable 7.00am to get there shortly after sunrise. As usual there was plenty of wildlife out and about and we saw a number of fallow deer.

Todays photograph was captured as we were heading out of the woods – you can see a colour version of this on our Flickr page, but this is a black and white version catching some of the autumn mist hanging in the air.

You may have gathered, if you follow this blog at all, that we visited Southwold last week. We were so lucky with the weather – mid October and comfortable in just a polo shirt. The sun really was glinting off the North Sea and this contrast really makes this black and white photograph of the resort.

Obviously, when you walk around Oxford it is the architecture that catches your eye, sandstone abounds.

We had absolutely glorious weather on Saturday for the Scott Kelby Worldwide Walk, which isn’t the best light to capture great images so here are a couple of versions of the same image where we try to reduce this problem.

Firstly an HDR (high dynamic range) version.

and secondly the LDR (low dynamic range) or, to you and me, black and white version.

I’m really quite undecided. I found these roses at the Foakes Hall in Great Dunmow this afternoon. I love the black and white conversion, but the orange is so vivid (at least I hope it’s orange – colour blind and all that)…